Two Worlds in Rotation
by Mayumi Sato
Summary: After finally conquering the project of his dreams, the engineer of development of Habitable Regions, Arthur Kirkland, doesn't want to let it be ruined by the absurd suggestions of his younger colleague. Unfortunately, they're starting to get late in their schedule due to their disagreements and Arthur ends up having to use the only mean he has to control Alfred F. Jones: seduction


_This is my first time translating one of my works to english and I apologize for any mistakes that you may find here. I'm doing my best and I hope that I can get better in this with practice. By the way, I want to thank SearchForMercury for being my beta in this project. Any mistakes that you may find here, it's my own fault because I still played a bit with the text after her revision. She helped me a lot and I'm really grateful._

_The brazilian portuguese allow many things with the language that I'm not sure if it's common in english. I tried to be loyal to my writing style but I don't know if this is going to end well so please leave a review after reading it! I need support in these first moments!_

_This was originally a HUGE one-shot written for a event with the theme "Futuristic but not apocalyptic AU". I choose to divide it in four parts because it's more easy to translate it this way._

_I wish you all a great experience reading this! I hope to see you soon!:3_

0000

First Part:

Arthur Kirkland, unlike his brothers, took forever to get the typical ambitious spirit of his lineage. As a child, he considered himself happy with his quiet life on Earth and never imagined himself going to other planets to pursue a career that potentially could give him great powers. Since the planet he lived on was a huge environmental and cultural preservation area, he knew there were considerable chances that he acquired a modest future, like maybe becoming a florist, and he was as pleased as he was aware of this possibility. Work with spacecraft on Mars? Deal with problems of loss of particles in teleporters on the Moon? Hmph. Not a chance. He didn't want a career that revolved around machines, particles, and numbers. Math is torture, concluded an eight-year's old Arthur solving his quadratic equations. Moreover, the Earth was the original planet where there was beauty, comfort, and serenity without the need for complex-technological-weird-things. If he could stay there and take care of a beautiful garden, he would be happy forever.

Or so he thought until he reached the age of twelve.

In the year 3052, when Arthur was in his early teens, confused and lost in relation to all his prior convictions, a light came to show him a new path - the light of a three-dimensional hologram used to show the lecture of Professor Matthew Jones to a class of students, one of the notable names in the department of engineering in the development of Habitable Regions.

This lecture changed Arthur's whole perspective about the universe. He almost couldn't breathe, hearing about all the adjustments that the planets passed in order to become areas where humans could live comfortably. It was impressive to see how many things needed to be planned so that a planet could pass from a desert with toxic fumes to a modern and organized urban area. And there was an art in planning these Regions which was extremely admirable. New types of buildings, new types of roads, new types of recreational areas - creating a new Habitable Region meant taking the first step towards the emergence of a completely new culture.

It was amazing. Being an engineer of DHR was a profession in which one would create a home for thousands of people at present and for all their future generations. It was a work whose final product would last until the end of times and keep developing autonomously over the centuries, earning a history, an identity.

Upon leaving the room at the end of the lesson, Arthur Kirkland still had questions about his body, other boys, and his own personality, but now he had one certain about his future. He would become an engineer of D.H.R.

Thus it was this that initiated his ambitious phase and Arthur did not allow for his passion to be diluted by all the problems and skeptics he faced. By the way, there were many skeptics and problems. The training of an engineer of D.H.R was complicated from start to finish. Only two Habitable Regions offered the courses and each course only had about twenty people per year. Therefore, Arthur Kirkland had to be among the first twenty places in the entrance exam to attend one of the colleges he wanted. With this goal in mind, he completely threw away his personal life during high school. Not even the vaguely frustrating, gentle warnings from his mother that, "You should not spend all day studying, when you know you won't be able to pass on what you want, honey. Just try to enjoy your teenage days," managed to divert him from his goal.

It was comically shocking when - different from what his parents, siblings, teachers, classmates, neighbors, acquaintances and even some strangers expected - his efforts had taken effect and he finished his high school, packed up to move to the Moon, leaving everyone dumbstruck and still absorbing the new information. Arthur Kirkland went from a kid who just wanted to plant some roses to a student of one of the most complex and limited courses of the universe. How unpredictable were the Kirklands.

Attending college was not easier than getting through the course. D.H.R engineers needed exceptionally high grades in mathematics, astrophysics, civil engineering, architecture, history of art, and more. Only six students graduated from a twenty person class. Among those graduates was an exhausted and satisfied Arthur Kirkland.

Achieving a Planetary Project was the last and equally hard next objective for Arthur. It was not every day that a planet could become habitable and, when the opportunity rose, hundreds of people wanted a job with few vacancies. Some of these people waited decades to become a part of such a project. In the end, most of them could never design a planet and had to settle for small jobs such as creating a new model of a building under certain parameters to a planet already inhabited or refining the construction of an architectural structure in natural satellite also already populated.

Ha! As if Arthur would let that happen to him. If one were to just design an insignificant floating building, it would have been better for him to stay on Earth! His ultimate goal was a planet. This was a dream that consumed him entirely while it burned inside his chest. He had kept drawings of several new types of constructions to suit the most diverse circumstances in his desk. Shapes, colors and themes inhabited his imagination. Sometimes, while going along the road Altitude 02 in his antigravity car, he looked at the blue Earth in the distance, his original home, and wondered how the future planet that he would plan from scratch would be. Maybe a frozen planet? Or a planet filled with active volcanoes? He dreamed and worked too much. Due to his ultimate ambition, he picked up the most complicated and unpleasant works to establish his name. He had dinners with influential people in the same business that he probably would slap in any other situation. All his efforts came from the hope of one day being able to create a whole new world somewhere in the galaxy.

Finally, on a certain morning in which he was asleep for a long time, after finishing a particularly complicated project - Dear God, how exhausting was making adjustments in the artificial climatic conditions of an underground Habitable Region - he was awakened by the annoying and alarmingly high-pitched noise of his holographic messaging device, which should have already been called five times if it had already reached this volume.

It was with a hostile snarl, a staggering gait, and silent promises of revenge that he attended the messaging device and saw the face of Francis Bonnefoy appear on the screen. In that moment, he wished with all his heart that holographic devices allowed the transfer of contact so he could punch him right in the face in that very second. Argh. Technology still had much to improve.

He was about to scream at Francis. Just because he was his old college roommate and one or another night of sexual curiosity, didn't mean he could keep calling so insistently and...!

"Have you seen what's going on Network , Arthur?" Francis asked before Mr. Kirkland could say anything scathing. There was such a peculiar gleam in his eyes that Arthur's anger was momentarily dimmed by his own curiosity.

He wanted to ask what happening on the Net was so fucking important, but again Francis did not let him speak. However, it didn't seem like he wanted to prevent him from talking. He was just too desperate to say whatever it was. Noticing this, Arthur felt his curiosity rise and begin to fill with anxiety.

"They got one," Bonnefoy said, dropping an expiration that seemed to been saved for many years.

"A what?"

"A habitable planet."

"..."

"And we're on the list of engineers of DHR invited to participate in the direction of the project."

This time, Arthur's response was not stopped by Francis but by his own sobs. Loud sobs, laden with emotions, memories and hopes accumulated for ten years. Hiccups finally admitting the uncertainty and insecurity that he tried to hold back for so many years. Sobs of pure relief. Sobs that were so strong that left his body aching.

Arthur dropped to his knees and continued to cry while the hologram in front smiled, becoming more and more blurred by his tears.

000

As stated, a planet was Arthur's original plan. His final project. A planet took ten years to be fully planned and another ten years to build. When Arthur finished this task, he would be fifty- two years old and could retire with the cozy certainty that his biggest dream had been realized.

So he had reason to believe that now he should only enjoy his happiness and everlasting peace because nothing could possibly bother him, right? And he actually thought so before meeting Mr. Jones, the man responsible for convincing him that people can find displeasure even in the most potentially delectable conditions.

No, no. He wasn't Mr. Matthew Jones, that kind man who used a teddy bear to talk about his fascinating profession to twelve year old boys and girls. He wished. Unfortunately, this Jones was his son. Alfred F. Jones. The unbearable, annoying, stupid, and unbelievably immature Alfred.

Oh, their first meeting. How could Arthur ever forget that date. The day on which Alfred came late to the reunion with loads and loads of pills of instantaneous nutrition that he was eating in the loudest way Arthur had the displeasure to see and hear. Previously, Mr. Kirkland didn't even know that someone could chew pills of supplement, producing the sound of a stone being ground!

When Arthur had the good sense to ask about his identity, since his delay meant that he had not had the opportunity to present himself, Mr. Jones smiled broadly and replied without caring at all about the hostile denotation of the question "May I know who the hell do you think you are?!" issued by an impatient Arthur Kirkland:

"Finally! I thought that the star of the meeting would not have a chance to perform! Alfred F. Jones at your disposal, ladies and gentlemen! Glad to meet you all!"

Preferring to ignore his own anger, the next question of Arthur was, of course...

"This 'F' stands for...?"

"Oh!" Mr. Jones opened his eyes with an air of surprise that was definitely fake, considering how it was followed by the most cunning smile and comment that Arthur Kirkland witnessed in his thirty-two years of life. "Listen, old man. I really understand that you want to know me better, but we're in the middle of a meeting here!" To make the matters worse, he took on a tone similar to the one of an adult explaining a rule to a child, adding a smile that had the audacity to look embarrassed, while spreading his arms in a mocking manner "Let's have some professionalism, ok?"

It was hate at first sight.


End file.
